leslie's articles & interviews

Leslie Charleson's Year for an Emmy?
Connie Passalacqua - Newsday - April 24, 1995

WHEN THE DAYTIME Emmys are awarded May 19, they will celebrate a year in which the genre's limits have been pushed. On NBC's "Days of Our Lives," the devil is inhabiting a heroine. On ABC's "General Hospital," a woman has been suffering from breast cancer without a "miracle cure." And it's most likely that veteran "GH" actress Leslie Charleson will emerge from under her character Monica Quartermaine's blond wig and pasty white-face makeup to win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress.

"When I started in daytime, we were never allowed to do any stories that were political or topical. You stayed in the middle of America, and you never stepped on a toe," says Charleson, who began on "A Time for Us" in 1966. (She has been playing Monica on "GH" since 1977.) "I've always thought that wasn't right, because we have an audience five days a week, year in and year out, where people really do listen and believe. If we can educate them, it's all the better."

What distinguishes Monica's cancer from the standard soap disease-of-the-month story is the lyrical yet powerful writing of head writer Claire Labine, which has revitalized the entire soap, and the unpretentiousness of Charleson's performance. She has always made surgeon Monica an interesting mix of salt and compassion.

When Labine came to the show a year and a half ago, Charleson approached her with the cancer story, an idea she says she derived from friends' experiences.

"I thought it might be interesting for my character. After a while on a soap you have to do more than just have affairs," she says. It certainly is transition for the character of Monica, who was usually seen trading comic barbs with her husband, Alan (Stuart Damon), and the rest of quarrelsome Quartermaine family.

"This story has really been done with intelligence, with compassion and thoughtfulness," says Charleson. Until Labine's regime, "GH" had been an action-adventure soap. Interestingly for a daytime soap, Monica is written neither as a heroine nor a victim. Through three surgeries, one cancer recurrence and chemotherapy, Monica's just been plain scared.

Charleson says her most difficult scene to play was a post-surgery night in which Monica opened her bathrobe to show husband Alan (Stuart Damon) her scar. Recollects Charleson, "I felt so vulnerable."

Charleson says she and "GH" intend to see the disease story all the way through, "because anything less would be to deceive the audience." This has meant months of wearing wigs (with which Monica masks the effects of her chemotherapy) and pale makeup. "I have to wash the makeup off my face before I go into the supermarket to buy my lunch, because I don't like to frighten people."

Charleson, who was born in Kansas City and is a veteran of dozens of episodic shows, says the highlight of the cancer story for her has been Monica's extended visit to La Mesa. This is a wellness center modeled on an actual cancer victim's support community in Santa Monica, Calif. "Claire and [`GH' executive producer] Wendy Riche and I and spent a couple of days there. Claire is a sponge, because the lives of those people certainly showed up on our show. For me it was invaluable just to sit and talk with them," she says. Other survivors were used in "GH's" re-creation of a Wellness Center. "And they constantly helped me. For example one day one said to me, `You have a little bit too much energy for someone who has just emerged from chemotherapy.' "

Currently on "GH," Monica, who has just been pronounced cancer free, wants to adopt the daughter of her La Mesa friend Page (played by Riley Steiner), who is severely ill. And she wants to set up a wellness center at General Hospital. Charleson says the story has been so emotionally demanding she often took the tension home with her from the studio. "I miss my turnoff on the highway sometimes." But what she probably won't miss is that Daytime Emmy.